Twisted Fates

by Danielle Rollins

  And now the strange men standing guard at the entrance to her hotel took on a sinister new meaning. It felt less like a mistake, more like a message.

  Was this still her hotel?

  The anger in her chest hardened, becoming fear. Mac was giving orders to her Freaks; Mac was having her solar panels delivered God knew where. What else was Mac doing?

  “Do you know where Mac is now?” she asked the boy, doing her best to keep her voice controlled.

  “In his room, I think.”

  His room? Who did Mac think he was, taking over one of their rooms? Another sideways glance at Roman told Dorothy that he was equally taken aback by this new sequence of events.

  “More happened in the last twenty-four hours than I’d expected,” Roman murmured.

  “Mac works fast,” Dorothy said, bitter. “Perhaps we should go back now and try to return a day earlier, as planned?”

  But, even as she said the words, Dorothy knew that this wasn’t possible. If their last trip back in time had taught her anything, it was that she could not change the past once it had already been set. They were stuck with this present, for better or worse.

  It chilled her, how easily things could change.

  “Thank you,” she said, turning back to the boy. She cast one last glance around the room, letting her eyes linger on each of the workers in turn. “Those panels aren’t to be taken out of this hotel without either Roman’s or my express permission. Is that understood?”

  A pause. And then each of the Freaks nodded.

  40

  Ash

  NOVEMBER 9, 2077, NEW SEATTLE

  The sky outside of Ash’s hotel room cell looked bruised: purple, with black clouds strewn across the horizon, their edges already turning yellow. He groaned and sat up. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed since he’d been brought here. A few hours, at least. Maybe a full day.

  His wrists had been tied behind his back, but his feet and legs were still free. He pushed himself off the hotel bed and walked over to the window, letting his head knock gently against the glass.

  The windows were barred. No way out. But even if they hadn’t been, even if Ash’s hands had been free and he’d been able to pry the glass open and climb outside, he doubted he’d have the guts to jump. The water seemed so far below. Eight stories, possibly more.

  He exhaled, heavily, his breath ghosting the glass. Dorothy had made this jump. She’d been in the same predicament as he was now, and yet, somehow, she’d managed to pry a window open and find her way outside. She’d stared down at the violent black water and leaped.

  Without warning, Zora’s voice snaked into his mind: You have to stop thinking that she’s the same girl you knew.

  He swallowed, hard. Zora. He was alone in here, but he wondered if Zora was being held in some other room in the Fairmont.

  Behind him: the scrape of metal in a lock. A door creaked open, bringing the smell of cigarette smoke into the small room.

  Ash stiffened.

  Footsteps, and then hands were grasping his shoulders, spinning him around. Mac had brought four Cirkus Freaks with him. Despite his misery, Ash felt his lip twitch.

  “Two men for each of my arms,” he said, flexing beneath his jacket. “I’m flattered.”

  “I aim to please,” Mac said from the doorway.

  “Where’s Zora?” Ash asked.

  “We left her on the docks. I have no use for mouthy women.” He ran a tongue over his chapped lips and then nodded at the men holding Ash’s arms.

  Ash swallowed.

  Well, shit.

  As expected, the Cirkus Freaks knocked him around the hotel room a little bit. Ash had a hard time following exactly what they were doing. There were simply too many fists and feet swinging in his direction. He stayed standing for the first few blows to his face and gut, and then one of the Freaks kicked his feet out from beneath him, and he dropped to the ground like a stone.

  His hands were still tied behind his back, and so he hit the floor face-first. A spray of blood painted the wood before his eyes.

  He remembered, clearly, the first crack of a boot in his ribs, how he curled, bracing to absorb the blow. Pain exploded through his chest, driving the breath from his lungs.

  The third, fourth, and fifth kicks blurred together, but the sixth kick was memorable, seeing as it was aimed at his face. He heard the crack of his nose breaking a split second before he felt the burn of pain. The room dissolved into white light and blood.

  Finally, Mac said, “Enough.”

  Ash struggled to stay conscious. He couldn’t see past the blood in his eyes. His breath was uneven, his heartbeat sputtering.

  Crouching, Mac pulled a wad of paper napkins from his pocket and began cleaning the blood from Ash’s face.

  “Hey, look, I’m sorry I had to do that,” he said conversationally. “But you see where I’m coming from, right? You came into my club, waved a gun around, demanded things. I’m respected around these parts, son. I can’t let you get away with that.”

  Ash closed his eyes. Well, he closed one of them. The right one was already swollen shut.

  “You should consider yourself lucky.” A grunt, and Mac wiped the blood from Ash’s eye with his thumb. “If you were anyone else, I’d have shot you back at the docks and been done with it.”

  “Do you expect me to thank you?” Ash laughed, spitting up blood.

  Mac frowned, and Ash got the feeling he didn’t have a lot of experience with sarcasm.

  “Why keep me alive at all?” Ash choked out. “You’re already working with the Black Cirkus, and they’re the ones with the time machine. You don’t need me.”

  Mac studied him, the tip of his tongue peeking out from between his lips.

  “Let me tell you a story,” he said after a moment. “About a month ago, my contact with the Center offered me a boatload of money if I could get them a time machine.” A shrug. “I guess their fancy scientists still haven’t been able to figure it out. Between you and me, I’d never given much thought to time travel. But, well, this amount of money could’ve had me sitting pretty for years. I would’ve been able to expand my little operation, take over Aurora, live like a king.”

  Mac grinned, revealing nicotine-stained teeth. “It was enough to start me wondering whether this place was even worth it. Twice in recent memory, an earthquake has come damn close to wiping New Seattle off the map. I had to ask myself: Did I really want to build my empire without some sort of guarantee that it wouldn’t happen again?”

  Ash blinked at him, his eyelashes still thick with blood. “That’s why you’re suddenly so interested in time travel? You want to know whether an earthquake’s going to destroy your whorehouses?”

  Mac held out his palms: What do you expect? “What can I say? I like to think ahead. And, when I got to the future, I saw that I had a pretty good reason to be worried. This next earthquake isn’t just wiping out the city, it’s wiping out everything, the whole coast. Anyone still living out here is gonna die.”

  For a moment Ash couldn’t hear anything over the blood pounding in his ears.

  Anyone still living out here is gonna die.

  It was just as they’d feared. The next earthquake was going to kill them all.

  “I’m not keeping you alive out of the goodness of my heart,” Mac said. “I have a feeling that Roman and Quinn aren’t going to play nice once they find out I took over their precious Black Cirkus. I have a plan to take care of them, don’t you worry about that. But once they’re gone, I’ll need someone else to fly my new time machine.” Mac sniffed. “I’m thinking I’ll go back in time. Use my money to set up a tech company in Seattle in 2015 or play the stock market in 1980. You know, something fun. I just need someone to fly the time machine for me.” He took Ash’s chin in one hand, grinning gleefully. “That’s where you come in.”

  Ash swallowed, tasting blood. “I’d rather die than help you,” he said.

  Mac shrugged. “That can also be arranged.”r />
  41

  Dorothy

  “Mac is busy right now. What do you need?”

  Dorothy had been standing in the hallway with her back to the hotel room door, studying a water spot on the wallpaper—and she turned around at the voice. Eliza was leaning head and shoulders into the hallway, the door held close behind her.

  Dorothy glanced from the girl’s face to the new cloak hanging from her shoulders to the shiny boots on her feet. “Those are new,” she said, shocked.

  Eliza grinned. “Mac asked me to do him a favor.”

  “You’re working for Mac now?” Roman asked.

  “Don’t look so surprised. You were the one who gave me the idea,” Eliza said innocently. “Or don’t you remember our conversation back at the Dead Rabbit?”

  A choked scream issued from inside the hotel room. Roman stiffened, and Dorothy saw his eyes travel past Eliza’s head, narrowing in curiosity.

  “Who’s in there?” Dorothy asked.

  “No one you need concern yourself with,” said Eliza. Was it Dorothy’s imagination, or did she seem to hold the door ever so slightly tighter? “Mac can find you after he’s done.”

  Roman made a noise in his throat. Mac didn’t give orders in their hotel, no matter what treasures he brought their Freaks. It’d been too long since they’d reminded the Black Cirkus who they were.

  Dorothy removed a long, thin dagger from her sleeve. The blade was smaller in diameter than a pencil, and so sharp that Eliza would have to squint to see where its point ended.

  “Do you know how much pressure it takes to rupture an eardrum?” Dorothy held the blade up to the light and a line of silver appeared along its edge. “I don’t know, myself, but I hear people used to do it by accident, with hairpins and cotton swabs. Imagine the damage this could do.”

  Eliza stared at the blade and licked her lips. Dorothy imagined she was thinking of how the metal might scrape against the inner membrane of her ear, how it might pop, feeling hollow at first, and then wet as pus and blood trickled down her neck.

  Dorothy smiled in a slow, practiced way that showed off all her small white teeth.

  “Tell Mac I need to speak with him now,” she said.

  Something flickered through Eliza’s eyes. Fear? Disgust? Dorothy couldn’t say for sure, but Eliza murmured, “Yes, ma’am,” and then pushed the door closed again, leaving Dorothy and Roman alone in the hall once more.

  “Mac has become a problem,” Roman said under his breath.

  “Do you have your gun?” Dorothy asked, slipping her dagger back up her sleeve.

  A pause, and then Roman said, “Naturally.”

  Dorothy pressed her lips together, her mind spinning. She’d never killed a man before, no matter what her reputation was, and she wasn’t sure she was capable of taking a life, even one as loathsome as Mac’s.

  Surely there was still another way?

  Another scream issued from the other side of the door. Dorothy felt as though the air had been sucked out of the hallway. She heard the muffled sound of voices and then footsteps.

  She rolled her wrists, feeling the cold steel of her daggers beneath her sleeves.

  The door opened, and Mac’s voice entered the hallway before he did. He was singing.

  “Close your windows tight, little children, the Fox and Crow are scratching at the glass . . .”

  Dorothy stiffened. It was the nursery rhyme the residents of New Seattle had made up about Quinn and Roman, and she’d always been morbidly proud of it. It had felt like proof that she’d made herself into a person to be reckoned with, even if it was in reputation only. Now, though, it felt like Mac was mocking her with it.

  “I’m glad the two of you stopped by,” Mac said cheerfully, as though Dorothy hadn’t just threatened a member of her own gang to force him to speak with them. His leg was still bandaged and, though he limped a bit, he seemed to no longer need his crutches to walk. “I’ve been thinking it’s time we took another little trip.”

  He held a cloth in his hands, and he was using it to wipe the blood from his skin. It wasn’t doing much good. There was simply too much blood, too little cloth.

  Dorothy stared at him, momentarily taken aback.

  Was he joking?

  Roman was the one who spoke. “And why would we do that?”

  “I’m afraid you aren’t in the position to be making such demands,” Dorothy said.

  Mac blinked at her and said, as though baffled, “Aren’t I? I was under the impression that we were working together here. You scratch my back, I scratch yours.”

  The idea of touching Mac’s back caused Dorothy to shudder involuntarily.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll like my new plan,” Mac told her. “I’ve seen enough of the future. If that’s what this world is going to look like in just a few short years, then I want no part of it. I’d rather go back in time and live like a king.”

  He lifted his fist, studying a yellowed fingernail. “All you have to do is take me back in time. I want to vet a few time periods before deciding on one. And then you can leave me there, and we’re all happy.” He looked back up at her, grinning. “What do you say?

  Dorothy hesitated. His desire to go back in time seemed true enough, but she doubted very much that he would just let them leave him there. Mac liked power too much to let their time machine fall through his fingers. This was a trick.

  She was about to tell him what she thought of his little plan when another choked cry from inside the hotel room stopped her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

  “Who do you have in there?” she asked instead.

  Mac grinned, and Dorothy felt duped. Clearly, he’d wanted her to ask.

  “See for yourself,” he said, throwing the door wide.

  Dorothy didn’t want to look, but her eyes seemed to move on their own, zeroing in on the figure lying utterly still on the floor.

  Ash had been beaten, that much was clear, but it wasn’t the beating itself that caused horror to rise in her throat. It was how he’d been beaten, how he’d been kicked and carved and sliced. His skin was white except for where it was red and clotted with blood. God, there was so much blood. Where had it all come from? It pooled around him and stained his clothes and hands and feet. A roaring sound filled Dorothy’s ears.

  Whatever had been done to him had been done gleefully.

  Dorothy’s first thought was that he was dead. This monster had killed him. But then she noticed that he was shaking, whether from the shock or the blood loss she couldn’t tell.

  Not dead yet. But close.

  Mac was studying her now, his eyes narrowing like lenses. Dorothy had to work hard to keep the emotion from her face. He knew. Somehow, impossibly, he knew about her history with Ash. He knew what he meant to her. How?

  It didn’t matter. Mac was going to kill Ash if she didn’t stop him. Her stomach roiled and her fingers curled around her hidden daggers. She wanted to pull them free and slice the smile off Mac’s face. She wanted to add his own blood to the blood that already painted his clothes. The want was so strong inside of her that it felt like heat.

  He’s near, she thought. Near enough that she if she struck now she could drive a dagger through his chest.

  But could she do it? Could she end a man’s life?

  She eased her daggers out of their harnesses.

  Yes, she thought.

  As though reading her mind, Mac hobbled out of easy reach. Her Cirkus Freaks closed around him, making it so that Dorothy couldn’t reach him, not unless she was willing to go through them.

  And were they hers any longer? Eliza, it seemed, had already defected. What about the others? Were they working for Mac now, too?

  Dorothy felt her heartbeat pulsing in her palm, vibrating through her daggers. She couldn’t risk it.

  Mac held out his hand and, as though on cue, one of the Cirkus Freaks handed him a knife.

  Smiling at her, he said, “Let me just finish this guy off and then we’ll dis
cuss this further.”

  Finish him off?

  The thought made her feel like screaming.

  “If you really want to go back in time, we should leave now,” Dorothy said, her mind working quickly. From the corner of her eye, she thought she saw Roman’s gaze flicker and settle on her. Dorothy didn’t look at him. In this moment, all she could think about was getting Mac away from Ash. Not just five years this time. Decades, centuries. “Before—”

  But her mind froze, and she could think of no reason that they should leave now, before Mac had a chance to kill Ash.

  Roman cleared his throat. “As I’m sure you know, the person you’re torturing is Jonathan Asher,” he explained. “He should have a public death, don’t you think?”

  Roman said all of this as though it were obvious, his expression blank.

  Mac’s eyes flicked between the two of them, suspicious, but he lowered his knife. “That’s not a bad idea.” Over his shoulder, he added, “Keep him alive until I get back.”

  Skin humming, Dorothy turned and started down the hallway, trusting the others to follow her. She slid her daggers back into their holsters.

  She may have let one moment pass, but there would be another. She’d make sure of it. For now, Mac wanted to go back in time, and so they would take him.

  He just couldn’t be allowed to return.

  42

  Ash

  “Ash . . . come on now, time to wake up.”

  The voice drifted out of the black, tugging him from unconsciousness. It was familiar.

  He struggled to raise his heavy lids. “Dorothy?” he murmured.

  And that’s how he knew he was dreaming. Because Dorothy couldn’t be here.

  A cool hand touched his cheek. The voice spoke again. “Hurry. You don’t have a lot of time.”

  Ash still didn’t open his eyes. There was blood crusted in his eyelashes, holding them shut.

  “You aren’t here,” he said. It was a struggle to speak. His tongue felt too big for his mouth.